Recently when Jack was over, he and Corwin found a discarded paintball. They decided that it would be cool to smack it with a hammer. So they got a rubber mallet Mom had been using (not on me!), put the paintball on a flat surface at roughly waist height, and prepared to strike. I was tempted to make a comment at that point, but decided that pedagogy required me to let the two of them explore the world of cause and effect in a self directed fashion. It was almost too much when, after arguing about who would get the joy of swing, they decided to hold the hammer together and strike jointly. But, dedicated as I am to education for our youth, I continued to remain silent.
Their blow was true and, as any one older than 10 would expect, the paint blasted out of the paintball in a nice circle that intersected the boys’ pants. Only through my super human control did I not fall over laughing at the combination of anguish and surprise in their post strike exclamations. Jack ended up getting sent back in to the house to change pants when his mom came by to pick him up to avoid paintball paint leaking on to the car seats. It’s that kind of reenforcement that truly causes learning to occur.
